What does Tim Walz bring to the Kamala Harris campaign?

Tim Walz has formally accepted the vice-presidential nomination, telling Democrats that "we'll sleep when we're dead".

Kamala Harris's running mate was "emotional" as he "touted his small-town upbringing" at the Democratic National Convention, said the BBC, but although his party seems "energised" by his place on the ticket, polls still suggest a "very close race" with Donald Trump and his own running mate, JD Vance.

What did the commentators say?

Walz's address in Chicago was a "political speed date" for a man "with limited time to show what he stands for", wrote James Matthews, US correspondent for Sky News. In the "huge" speech, he "won over delegates' hearts and minds", said Ed Pilkington, chief reporter for The Guardian US.  Trump has claimed that vice-presidential running mates make "virtually no impact" on elections, and after Walz's speech, the Republican "better pray he's right".

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"At moments", wrote Philip Elliott for Time, it was "plenty clear" that Walz could "make inroads" to moderates and conservative voters who "mightn't be entirely on-board with Harris".

Walz "seems entirely comfortable", if "cornily so", in his "persona as the Dad Next Door" who "never found a cliche he didn't find useful as a proxy for his feelings", and he "also brought sufficient fire" to keep the Democratic base "fired up" without "alienating the centrist core that is this nation".

Allies believe Walz can "broaden" Harris's appeal to "rural and working class voters", wrote Sam Cabral for BBC News. The 60-year-old "brings with him a folksy, plain-spoken and sharp-tongued approach" and political experience, "representing a Republican-leaning district in Congress" and "then later passing left-wing policies as Minnesota's governor", which could have "broad appeal" at a time when US politics is "so polarised".

"In recent years", Bruce Schulman, the William E. Huntington Professor of History at the Boston University College of Arts & Sciences, told BU Today, "the idea of 'balance' has reappeared" in demographic terms. The Democrats have balanced gender on their tickets three times and the Republicans have done it once. "You could consider this a case of both gender and ethnic-racial balance", he added.

Reporting on the first Harris-Walz event, in Philadelphia earlier this month, The Independent's Andrew Feinberg said the arena was "literally packed to the rafters" with an energy that "hasn't been present at any Democratic event in nearly a decade".

The "multiracial, multigenerational" crowd "mirrored the scenes I witnessed during Donald Trump's first campaign for the presidency" and was also "something I hadn't seen since" Barack Obama's campaign for a second term. Harris and Walz may be the underdogs, but Feinberg thinks we could see an "underdog victory on election night".

What next?

With one more day to go, the convention will climax with a speech by Harris this evening, when she'll "face the biggest test of her political life", said Lauren Gambino in The Guardian.

With Walz watching, she is expected to try and "lay out her personal story" as she "bids to become a historic president: the first woman president and the first woman of colour", but she "will also lay out a sharp contrast" between her "positive view of the country's future prospects" and Trump's "almost wholly grim warnings about the state of the nation" and his "focus on immigration and crime".

Trump is "reportedly fretting" over whether Harris's speech will "draw more viewers than his did", said The Independent. The "notoriously ratings-fixated" former president has been asking some media and political allies "what they think the Democratic convention's TV ratings will be like", said Rolling Stone.